January 31, 2022

Dynamic Website Content. A website that updates itself. Part 3

Dynamic Website Content. A website that updates itself. Part 3
Dynamic Website Content. A website that updates itself. Part 3
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Welcome to Part 3 of our series on Dynamic Website Content.

If you happened to miss article 1 and 2, you can click below to view.

View Dynamic Website Content Part 1

View Dynamic Website Content Part 2

Is it possible for you to design a website that updates itself?

In a way, yes we can! However it is more of an expansive question..., which we'll explain via a case study.

Case Study - Real Estate Website

We were recently contacted by an Independent Real Estate. They were looking to build a new website so they could get the custom look and feel that they felt their current provider wasn't able to provide. That's simple, we build custom websites everyday and we can certainly sprinkle on some wow factor along with integrating our World Leading SEO knowledge (you can read about our SEO by clicking here) to help them Look Good and Get Found!

Pulling in Dynamic content from an external source

The complexity of the build came about when they wanted to integrate their ReNet listing account with the website so it could display listings, sold properties and the like. (ReNet is a real estate management software solution which has an automatic portal sync for property listings. Essentially this allows the user to enter one listing into a backend, which then generates a listing on all of the major real estate website listing sites in Australia).

So, after some research, we contacted a developer friend who has a talent for writing API code. API stands for Application Programming Interface which is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other. This is a specialist profession in software development.

The custom API code which needed to be written would allow us to import many fields of data such as the property price, image, image gallery, bedrooms, dwelling type, square metres, bathroom numbers (you get the idea). This would be the source of our Dynamic Content.

We would then need to design a framework or template of which all of the relevant data could be pulled from this external source, put into order and then to populate website pages. As an example, if the data was refreshed through the API code every 2 hours, the website would then automatically write its own pre-designed pages and publish to the new website. This could theoretically be used to design a custom listing menu page. Clicking a listing would then take the user to the listing's individual page along with contact details and information on the listing.

The amazing thing about this is that as the data is entered into ReNet, it would also publish to the custom website. When a listing has been flagged as sold, the listing would archive and automatically remove itself from the website and generate itself onto a Sold Properties menu page. If it was simply placed Under Offer, we could theoretically design a little flag which shows the user that it is under offer.

Other uses for the data on this custom website

The data or Dynamic Content which we could pull from this external source could be used for other things on the website. This could include listings being automatically added to a new listings section of a page and even cross referenced with other details such as the agent's profile. The individual profile of each agent could be entered within the custom website's backend (by the client) and would include their image, contact details, social media account links, specialty, biography etc. Each individual agent's page could then be filled with Dynamic Content showing their own listings and recently sold listings.

The options are endless but here is another feature - all of the above could then be cross referenced with an Articles page which we could build. Articles could be written by that individual agent which could cover anything from preparing your home for sale, viewing tips etc, and then work in with their social media and individual marketing strategy to cross pollinate and promote themselves.

A self-updating website - it can be done!

As you can see, the limits of using Dynamic Content are only limited by your imagination.

As for the above website, we are waiting to see if we are successful or not. Potentially, this is because we added way too many features and the price became too high on paper. A custom website can cost $5000 or $20 000 for something that looks almost the same on the surface. It's for this reason that when you are preparing to engage a web designer, price shopping is not the best method to get the best solution for your business. A web designer will prepare what they believe to be the best solution to solve your problem. Look at their portfolio and if you like their work, arm yourself with some questions, explain to them your problem and your must-haves. Give them a realistic budget that you are working towards and if this figure is flexible, should extra features be advantageous to your organisation. When you receive the proposal have an in-depth conversation with them about the features that have been included.

Preparing a proposal can sometimes take 5-8 hours (or more if software developers need to be consulted such as this one) of which if it doesn't go ahead the studio has lost that much in productive, billable time. Whilst we may have lost a considerable number of man hours in preparing a proposal of this complexity, we learnt a lot about the different ways that Dynamic Content can streamline a business, reduce its ongoing design costs and update itself. That knowledge is now invaluable and we look forward to working with Dynamic Content into the future.

So convinced are we that this is the way that websites are now built, the site you are now viewing has over 75% Dynamic Content with an SEO Technical Score which is as good as any static site, anywhere in the world.

Keen to discuss a website with dynamic content for your business? Book an online or in person meeting with us!

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